Press releases

MINSK, 22 November (BelTA) – The 8th edition of the Minsk International Christmas Opera Forum will be running in the Belarusian capital on 15-22 December, BelTA learned from the National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater of the Republic of Belarus.

The forum will open with Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute which premiered in Minsk in March this year. The production team was led by Director Hans-Joachim Frey who staged Flying Dutchman in Minsk in 2013. The performance on 15 December will star Nadine Koutcher, the winner of the 2015 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, the two-time winner of the Russian National Theater Award Golden Mask. The cast will also feature Andrei Valentii (Sarastro), Yuri Gorodetski (Tamino), Irina Kuchinskaya (Pamina). Conductor – maestro Wilhelm Keitel (Germany) who has worked with the Belarusian Bolshoi Theater for more than 15 years.

Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana will be shown on 16 December. Premiered last theatrical season, produced by chief director of the Bolshoi Theater Mikhail Pandzhavidze, Cavalleria Rusticana will immerse the viewers in the vortex of turbulent passions and complex relationships between the characters where the abandoned lover blinded by jealousy is ready for anything to bring her man back. The cast includes Ekaterina Golovlyova (Santuzza), Stanislav Trifonov (Alfio), Kriskentia Stasenko (Lola). Honored Artist of Russia Akhmed Agadi (Mariinsky Theater) will take on the role as Turridu. Akhmed Agadi is adored by the Belarusian public and is a welcome guest in Minsk. He has repeatedly starred as the guest soloist in the Belarusian theater.

Opera i Filharmonia Podlaska (Poland) will show the world’s most popular opera Carmen on 18 December. The interpretation of the love triangle between Carmen, an exotic gypsy woman, a bullfighter and a soldier by famous Polish director Beata Redo-Dobber is an inner drama of a beautiful seductive woman, with references to feminism and detailed analysis of the phenomenon of femme fatale.

On 21 December the Belarusian Bolshoi Theater will premiere Giuseppe Verdi’s Traviatta staged by Latvian director Andrejs Zagars. The sixth production of the legendary opera promises viewers an insight into the Parisian realities of our time, the analysis of public loneliness and, of course, a real love story. The cast includes Alexander Mikhnyuk (Alfredo), Vladimir Petrov (Germont), Ekaterina Mikhnovets (Flora). Nadezhda Pavlova will sing as Violetta. The soloist of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater today, Nadezhda Pavlova won the hearts of the Belarusian public with her triumphant performance in the finale of the Minsk Vocal Singing Competition 2015. Last theatrical season Nadezha Pavlova became the guest soloist of the Bolshoi Theater of Belarus.

A gala concert on 22 December will draw together world opera stars: big-name singers, winners of past editions of the Minsk competition and the 2017 installment. The gala concert will feature Tigran Oganyan (Armenia), Andrei Nemzer (Russia), Oleg Budaratsky (Russia), Nadezhda Pavlova (Russia), and Igor Borko (Ukraine), Sundet Baigozhin (Kazakhstan), Azer Zeynalov (Azerbaijan), Ilham Nazarov (Azerbaijan), Afag Abbasova (Azerbaijan), Alexandrina Stoyanova-Andreeva (Bulgaria), Helene Carpentier (France), Viktorija Miskunaite (Lithuania), Tatiana Busuioc (Moldova), Lasha Sesitashvili (Georgia), Hector Lopez Mendoza (Mexico). Conductors are Gianluca Marciano (Italy), Andrei Galanov.